Months before the Dublin Lockout, the ITGWU won a significant victory in a docks strike in Sligo.
In this week’s Sunday Read, we republish history lecturer John Cunningham’s account of the dispute, in which the use of scab labour became a significant factor.
In several respects, the Sligo strike from March to June 1913 anticipated the Dublin Lockout. Sligo was much smaller than Dublin – with a population of 11,000 in 1911 – but its dominant employer was as determined an opponent of trade unionism as William Martin Murphy.
Arthur Jackson operated the Pollexfen family enterprises, including the Sligo Steam Navigation Company. By 1913, he was a veteran union buster, having driven out the National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL) in 1891, and maintained a non-union regime for 20 years by favouring certain stevedores and work gangs, thereby preventing workers from making common cause.
Reaching Sligo in September 1911, the ITGWU organised local dockyard and mill labourers. Dockworker John Lynch was appointed organiser. The local bishop preached against the union and against James Larkin when he came to speak, but workers paid no heed.
In June 1912, employers were surprised by a strike and Jackson was obliged to concede a ‘closed shop’ regime (unionised employees only).
The introduction by Jackson of strike-breakers from Liverpool on 26 March would have tragic consequences. Several hundred police could not prevent women and girls, armed with sticks, from boarding the SS Liverpool and assaulting the 29 scabs.
Nearby, ITGWU member Patrick Dunbar received a fatal blow to the head. Dunbar’s local strike-breaking assailant was subsequently charged with murder but acquitted on grounds of self-defence.
The tragic death of Dunbar at the port prompted outside intervention, but Jackson resisted the appeals from the mayor, bishop and Board of Trade. Frustrated, he set about preparing to drive out the ITGWU, just as he had driven out the NUDL.
As William Martin Murphy would later do, Jackson liaised with the authorities and arranged a supply of strike-breaking ‘scab’ labour. Preparations made, he set about provoking a strike.
First, he had unionised sailors sacked and prosecuted, and replaced them with local scab labour. He continued to act provocatively until most Sligo workers had gone on strike rather than handle ‘tainted goods’.
With up to a thousand workers and their families affected, the eight-week-long strike was comparable in scale to the later Dublin conflict.
Then, suddenly, on 6 May 1913, he conceded completely, evidently accepting that he could not overcome the determination of the ITGWU members, a determination reinforced by the killing of Dunbar. The 1913 union victory in Sligo was significant – one of the major achievements of the ITGWU in the view of James Larkin.
Caption: The grave of Patrick Dunbar (39), who died during the Sligo dockers’ strike in March 1913. Dunbar was fatally beaten by strike-breakers during the dispute, becoming a symbol of the human cost of the struggle for trade union recognition. His grave at Sligo Cemetery was rediscovered 100 years later and a new headstone was unveiled in August 2013 by SIPTU General President Jack O’Connor.